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Son of the Mob

Gordon Korman

Son of the Mob
Gordon Korman
Hyperion, New York, 2002
262 pp., $5.99 (paperback)

Annotation: Vince Luca, the son of a notorious mob boss, becomes romantically involved with Kendra Bightly, the daughter of an FBI agent leading a criminal investigation against Vince's father.

Review: When Vince discovered that his father's vending machine business had little to do with vending machines and a lot to do with organized crime, he made a deal with his father. Vince would not follow his brother, Tommy into the business and his father's business would not complicate Vince's life. Easier said than done, as Vince quickly discovers. One night out on a hot date he finds a live body in the trunk of his car. Further complications ensue as Vince starts dating Kendra and tries to keep the relationship secret from both of their fathers — as well as his father's criminal activities from Kendra herself. Meanwhile, in his attempts to save the lives of two men heavily indebted to his father's loan-sharking business, Vince becomes part of the life he had previously foresworn.

Korman gives Vince a wry, ironic voice well suited to his adolescent protagonist's perspective. Vince is a young man attempting to put right much that is wrong in his world. His frustrations, his disappointments and his compassion reflect a growing moral consciousness of how his life has benefited from his father's criminal activities and his father's love for him, a life of luxury borne of the suffering of others. Certainly teen boys will identify with Vince's difficulties in getting a date, his uneasy relationship with his sex-minded best friend, Alex, and the great lengths Vince goes to for the sake of impressing a girl. Yet it is the moral conflict at the center of the story, the engine that drives Vince toward a more sophisticated view of moral ambiguity, that will speak to teen boys and girls coming to grips with the privileges social status confers upon them at the expense of the poor and the historically oppressed. Give Korman credit for mining this material for smart, character-driven humor.